Dengue reached into a kitchen cabinet, wrapped his palm around a small bottle and twisted the cap between his thumb and finger. An orange spurt of hot sauce roped into the pan and sizzled. Only when the Ambassador cooked did a decade’s worth of model-glue fumes dissipate, or seem to. I’d never been able to unravel whether his dependence on the braincell-popping odor was the byproduct or the genesis of his obsession with constructing “Battle Alphabets,” huge, three-dimensional versions of the spike-tailed guerilla letterforms he’d once painted on subway trains. He built them from industrial plastics, scrap-metal, wood. Whatever people brought him, for Dengue never ventured outside his apartment.

I hadn’t knocked on his door until my second banished month, after two full four-day rotations through the homes of every other hospitable person I knew. I was being very careful to maintain most-favored-houseguest status with them all, because there was no telling how much longer I’d have to do this. With all the money I’d blown treating my hosts and hostesses to breakfasts and flowers and weed I could have rented my own place, but no landlord who hasn’t been sniffing glue himself hands the keys over to an eighteen-year-old with no documented income, regardless of how much cake the kid flashes. Not even if he’s Banana Republiced up, pants fitting right and everything.

When the rumor surfaced, I hopped a ferry over to New York’s forgotten borough and watched the barge slide by, stacked high with filth New York was running out of places to pile. The sides were blank. I hadn’t believed the story to begin with. If Billy had bombed the vessel – if Billy were still Billy – he’d have put Amuse’s name up too, honored his dead.

If Billy were still Billy. That was back when I still acted like I knew him. Felt like I knew him, I should say, the way little kids feel like they know the swashbuckling righteous-crusader assholes we cram down their throats the minute Goodnight Moon gets boring. Stand Billy between Sherwood Forest’s Prince of Thieves and Gotham’s Masked Avenger – neither one a family man, I might add – and the luster paints itself on with an elephant brush. Your boy here led grade-school Brooklyn in somber nods for six years running. He had no choice, I’d tell myself, pumping my chin at some irregularity in the pavement. He had to leave. Good old head-not-the-heart Dondi, thinking his way free of the pain. I kept that up until autumn 2000, when Karen started letting pigeons shit the monument, at which point the secret door to a whole new magical kingdom of fuckedupedness swung open like, “bring your ass in here, young man, we’ve been expecting you.” But later for that.

The Ambassador fell into his recliner, plate in hand. “Dis nah di same,” he said, and shoveled a mound of plantain, potato, egg and pork into his mouth.

“Let me guess. Some dirty white bum was spotted wandering around a train yard, mumbling to himself. Quick, call Fever, must be Billy Rage. Never mind the fact that painting subway cars in 2005 makes your source delusional to start with. Like the buff doesn’t exist? Like anybody’s gonna see his piece except a couple work bums and maybe a guard?”

“Yeah, right. I spent my childhood surrounded by grown-ass men who still call themselves Donk 202 and Blaze One and shit, trading train flicks in Karen’s – oh, I’m sorry, Wren 209’s – living room and arguing about who kinged the 2s in ‘76 and who rocked the Flying Eyeball character first, Kid Panama or Seen. I know more about nostalgia than anybody my age should, man.” I took a final bite, and dropped my fork. “That was delicious, by the way.”

I nodded. Like he could see me. Maybe he heard it, or felt the displaced air.

“Sambo was at the Coney Island Yard, our old homebase. He saw a dude in the tunnel wearing one of those Mexican blanket things. You know, Eastwood keeps the sawed-off tucked underneath in all those Sergio Leone joints?”

“Sambo said it took this guy an hour to walk the last fifty feet to the yard, because the whole time, he was writing on the walls. Nobody just walks the tunnels. You got the third rail, live trains, no light – you could get killed. Sambo called out to him, and dude turned and ran.”

I freed the book. It was enormous. Graffiti writers can steal anything. Now the art supply and hardware stores lock all the paint inside glass cabinets and make you show ID, but racking was a way of life during the train era, the first thing you learned how to do. Some guys built reps just for “inventing” cans. It’s ridiculous how much I know about this old man shit, I realize, believe me. Kid Panama painted the Flying Eyeball first, by the way, in case you were dying of curiosity.

Dengue finished eating and slid his utensils neatly to one side of the plate, as if a waiter were going to come and clear our dishes. “There’s a flick in there of these juju priests down in the rainforests who cover everything in symbols to ward off evil. They use all kinds of shit. Blood, vegetable inks, chalk.”

Dengue listened to me eye the picture. “The whole tunnel looked like that,” he said. “All the way across the ceiling, in some places. Chalk and red latex house paint with mashed-up berries in it, those poisonous ones that grow in the park. Sambo walked through two stations, and it was still going when he turned around.” Dengue’s hand darted from his lap to the windowsill, and closed around the neck of a Ray & Nephews bottle he kept there.

“I sent some kids out last night for a look,” he said, swigging the last of his overproof Jamaican rum. “This stuff is in tunnels all over the city. Somebody’s putting in work.”